Range adjustable real-time autocorrelator

ABSTRACT

In this invention, two rotating parallel mirrors are used as an optical delay component. The rotating axis and the incident beam are on the same horizontal plane. There is a small angle δ between them. The scan range can be easily adjustable by changing this angle. Using the newly invented method, real-time and range adjustable autocorrelator is realized.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

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FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH

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SEQUENCE LISTING PROGRAM

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BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field

This invention relates to pulse laser measurement and characterization.

2. Prior Art

Autocorrelator has been widely used to measure the pulse width of ultrafast laser pulses. An autocorrelation includes splitting a laser beam into two, delaying one of them in time/space, and recombining them for time-correlation characterization. A rapid scanning autocorrelation detector (U.S. Pat. No. 4,406,542) was invented in 1983. The device comprises an essential part which changes the delay of the pulse while it is rotating. The optical length of the light beam inside the rotating glass block changes as it rotates. The dispersion inside the glass is proportional to the travel distance and the spectrum width. The instrument works well with the pico-second or nano-second laser pulse, which usually have narrow spectrum bandwidth. However, a 100 femto-second (fs) laser pulse has a spectrum width of about 10 nanometer (nm). There will be considerable distortion to if it is used to measure a 100 fs laser. The same issue exists in other designs (U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,190,366, 4,265,540).

The second disadvantage of this device is that the beam intensity of the delay line changes when the block is rotating. It is because the transitivity of the dielectric depends largely on the incident angle. Thus, this measured autocorrelation trace is incorrect.

The third disadvantage in the mentioned invented devices is that the measurement range is fixed after the device is made. This disadvantage becomes a problem when a device has 100 ps scan range is trying to measure a 100 fs pulse which has low repetition rate, such as 1 kHz. The device will not pick up enough points (pulses) in one scan. Thus, the measurement becomes impossible.

In order to overcome the shortages in the current optical autocorrelators, new autocorrelation methods should be invented. In this document, I will describe an autocorrelation method which is able to measure the laser with low repetition rate. There is no dispersion in the pulse since only reflective optical components are used. The new invention also provides an easy way to adjust the scan range. As a result of this, it also improves the precision of the measurement.

DRAWINGS Figures

In the drawings, closely related figures have the same number but different alphabetic suffixes.

FIG. 1 is a schematic layout of the autocorrelator (partially perspective view).

FIG. 2 illustrates the perspective of the optical delay line. (a) Side view (b) Top view.

FIG. 3 shows how to modify mirror 3 to achieve half duty cycle scan

FIG. 4 shows another type optical delay line. The rotation arm is folded (optically) by mirror 32. It has the same function as the delay line depicted in FIG. 3

FIG. 5A and FIG. 5B depict autocorrelation traces that correspond to full scan and half scan respectively

REFERENCE NUMERALS

1, 2 flat mirror  3 round flat mirror  4 rotating arm, mount of 1, 2 11 beam splitter 13 roof mirror 14 curved mirror 15 nonlinear crystal 16 photomultiplier tube 17 photo interrupter 18 motor shaft 20 delay motor 21 rotation stage 34 delay motor with a center hole 35 flat mirror

DETAILED DESCRIPTION First Embodiment FIG 1.

The pulse duration of the laser light can be revealed by intensity autocorrelation between two child pulses created by a beam splitter. Two child pulses propagate separately and one of them has a variable travel distance. They are focused on the same spot of a nonlinear crystal in order to generated sum frequency signal (SFS). The SFS intensity is proportion to the spatial and temporal overlap of the two beams. The temporal overlap can be controlled by changing the travel distance of one light trace. Such changes can be set to linearly proportion to the scan time. Thus, the SFS has a temporal profile that reflects the temporal profiles of the original laser pulse. From the temporal profile of the SFS signal, we can calculate the laser pulse width.

The essential part used in this invention is a parallel mirror set. The function of this parallel mirror set can be found in a published paper (Opt. Commun 36(5), 406, 1980). The first embodiment I made is depicted in FIG. 1. As shown in the figure, two parallel mirrors (1 and 2) work as a variable optical delay component when they rotate. A horizontal laser beam shines on mirror 1 at approximately 45° and then hit mirror 2. The outcome beam from 2 hits on mirror 3 at normal angle. Thus, the beam is reflected back to where it comes. The optical delay is continuously changed via rotating the mirrors, which are mounted on a motor. The rotating axis is on the horizontal plane and is not parallel to the incident beam. The incident angle (on mirror 1) changes as the motor rotates.

Let's assume δ to be the angle between the rotating axis and the incident beam, θ to be the rotation angle of the delay arm. We further assume that when the delay line is horizontal (as shown in FIG. 2), θ=0. We then can calculate the incident angle at the mirror 1 to be

$\theta_{inc} = {{\cos^{- 1}\left( {\frac{\sqrt{2}}{2}\left( {{\cos \; \delta} - {\cos \; \theta \; \sin \; \delta}} \right)} \right)}.}$

With small angle approximation (δ is close to 0), we then have θ_(inc)≅45°+δ cos θ. Therefore, the optical delay changes is 2d(cos(δ cos θ)+sin(δ cos θ)−1), where d is the distance from 1 to 2. Using small angle approximation again, we get the approximation of delay to be 2dδ cos θ, which is linearly proportion to the cosine of the angle of rotation. Thus, the full optical delay range of is from −2dδ to 2dε, which is also the scan range.

The incoming beam is split into two beams by beam splitter 11. One of the beams is directed to a flat mirror 12 and roof mirror 13, which shifts the reflected beam laterally on the horizontal plane. This arm has a fix optical delay. Another beam goes to the rotating delay line, which was described above. The two beams have the same propagation direction before they hit a curved mirror 14. The curved mirror 14 focuses the two beams on a BBO crystal 15 at the same spot but at different incident angles. The sum frequency generation, which is in between the two beams, is monitored by a photon detector 16—photo multiplier tube (PMT). The signal is amplified and visualized on an oscilloscope, a computer or other waveform devices. Other types of photon detector can be used if as long as it can pick up the SFS signal.

Compared to the method described in the published paper (Opt. Commun 36(5), 406, 1980), the new method has an optical delay component rotating very differently to achieve real-time and adjustable range scan, although they both comprise two parallel mirrors. In the published paper, the rotating axis is perpendicular to the incident beam. In the new design, the rotating axis and the incident beam are in the horizontal plane. There is a very small angle between them.

Change scan range: The devise can perform rapid scan of laser pulse width in any range with the same precision. The scan range is adjustable by changing d or δ. The distance between mirror 1 and 2, d is usually fixed when the instrument is made. The adjustment of δ is done by turning the delay motor 20 (with the optics mounted) along a vertical axis. Motor 20 is mounted on the rotation stage 21. The rotating axis of 21 intersects with the rotating axis of 20 (or 18). The cross point is on the surface of mirror 1. Since rotating the parallel set mirror does not change the direction of the beam, other optical elements do not need to be realigned. Thus, changing the scan range is very simple and easy.

Half duty cycle scan: Because the delay line is continuously rotating at one direction, the optical delay changes from 2dδ to −2dδ and from −2dδ to 2dδ. Thus, the correlation scan process passes the zero delay twice in one full round scan. Theoretically, the two autocorrelation signals should be identical (FIG. 5A). Any of these signals is adequate for the pulse measurement. However, to avoid the noise and imperfect of the system, one can cut the mirror 3 into half to perform half duty scan. An example is shown in FIG. 3. The output signal for this configuration is depicted in FIG. 5B. This also reduces the cost of the instrument.

Folded delay line: The delay line depicted in FIG. 2B needs a large round flat mirror 3 as a back reflector. The large, high quality flat mirror is expensive and heavy. A way to avoid this is to optically fold the arm (FIG. 4). The delay in this case is still from −2dδ to 2dδ, where d is the travel distance from mirror 31 to 32 to 33.

Low repetition rate pulse measurement: One can perform rapid real-time measurements on pulsed laser with any repetition rate. Because the scan range is adjustable, all of (or half of) the pulses can be utilized to generate autocorrelation signal. For example, with the delay motor rotating at 1 Hz, 10 points will be generated for a 10 Hz laser (5 points for half duty scan). This is enough to construct a correlation curve to calculate the pulse duration. Of course, the measurement becomes much easier and more precise if the pulse repetition rate is higher. The autocorrelator can perform much faster real-time measurement by increasing the rotation speed of delay motor 20. The speed of the motor is monitored by a photo interrupter 17. 

1. A real time range adjustable real-time autocorrelator comprising: a) one set of parallel mirrors (1 and 2), which is mounted on a delay motor b) a motor, where the delay line in a) is mounted, rotates constantly and continuously. Its rotating axis has a small angle δ to the incident beam c) a rotation stage 21 which is used to change scan range of the autocorrelator d) a flat mirror 3 (any shape) reflects back the beam e) a roof mirror reflects the beam back and laterally shifts a certain distance f) a curved mirror which focuses two child pulse on the same spot of the nonlinear crystal g) a nonlinear crystal which generates the intensity correlation between two pulses h) a detector which monitors the intensity correlation signal i) a photo interrupter which monitors the speed of motor 20 and generates synchronizing signal
 2. The autocorrelator of claim 1 wherein the mirror 3 is replaced by a half sized mirror to implement half duty scan
 3. the autocorrelator of claim 1 wherein the rotation stage 21 can be either manual or motorized rotation stage
 4. the autocorrelator of claim 1 where the roof mirror 13 is mounted on a translation stage
 5. an autocorrelator in claim 1, wherein the nonlincear crystal can be BBO, LBO, KDP, KTP and any other second harmonic generation crystals
 6. the autocorrelator of claim 1 wherein a new method of changing the optical delay where the rotating axis of the motor is not perpendicular to the incident beam
 7. the autocorrelator of claim 1 where the rotating parallel mirror set is replaced by a 3-piece mirror set (FIG. 4).
 8. the autocorrelator of claim 7 wherein the motor 34 has a hole at the center 